Ayyan Review

It's lifeless and it's contagious. Ayyan sucks the life out of you dry. The film makers think that getting motherly characters to spout annoying nonsense would get people to relate to it and appreciate its so called realism. Making references to suicide has become a regular habit in giving a film its authenticity. The only thing Ayyan gets right is narrating past events in black and white.

There's a reason Ayyan isn't playing in all theaters in chennai. It's humdrum, moth-eaten, uneventful and tiresome. I'm aware that they all mean the same but even piling on the same adjectives isn't enough to emphasize accurately. The producer has a strategy. Let's get a guy with a nice smile to sport the same look as Jai does in Subramaniapuram, get a traditional looking girl by his side, get actors like Ganjakaruppu who previously worked with Sasikumar(the director of Subramaniapuram) and pay a lot of money to some well known music director so that people could expect another 'Kangal Irandal'. I can imagine the producer saying 'Ivan thaan namma hero'. This 'hero' is blown out of proportion. He's more of a superhero. However, the producers don't want to add special effects. That would be emasculating it of its charm. Good business sense, don't you think? So what do they do? They instruct him to work on getting angry and screaming, which he has to do, fifteen minutes before the credits roll. Until then, he's given the freedom of being himself.

When this superhero (Vasan Karthik) is on screen screaming with rage, it isn't the character's emotions. It's the actor screaming out to potential producers and directors "Look, I can act." The rest of his act involves twitching his eye muscles excessively, flexing his nostrils and sighing with his eyes closed. At one point, he reads a biography of Che Guevara and feels a rush of inspiration. With the audience, that moment has the opposite effect. At another point in the film, a couple is about to commit suicide and he says "En kooda vanga" and that is enough to instill hope in them. Talking about it is no spoiler, I assure you. You would've walked out of the theatre, long before the film gets here. How did I manage to sit through it? I remember keeping myself entertained by lazily punching the seat in front of me. The humour didn't help either. It kept revolving around one topic- infidelity.

Ayyan is the cure for insomnia. Every time a character opens its mouth and talks, you wish you could cross the threshold between the two of you and slam it shut. You won't believe how it ends. It's a royal rumble with both the cops and the villagers participating. The first person to get tossed out is a little girl. The winner, of course, is our superhero. Under the influence of repressed anger, he manages to beat up a couple of guys. What does this tell the people? Anger makes you do wonders.